Julien’s testimony of his deconstructive art at the Painting with Nature Youth Exchange in Kora

Julien participated in “Painting with Nature”, Erasmus+ youth exchange with Kora in Italy in March 2024. Among other activities, he got invited to create an art piece in collaboration with nature and he experimented with a new creative way, destruction. 

This is his testimony of the creative process that followed!

This creation is based on the topic of destruction. I made it without objectives because I don’t have any skills in arts and I didn’t want to be disappointed. I tried to have fun and to use hasard and the skills from other people to create it (Sledding in the grass with the canva, throw it, playing football with it or basketball on it, hit a fence, asking friends to do random things on it or paint a landscape,… ). It was also a way for me to let off steam, externalize some inner pressures and play with hasard and chaos.

I wanted to create a fake canva as a simulator to destroy it first. But while I was creating it I realised that it doesn’t make sense to simulate a destruction. I decided to Keep using this new canva and keep working in both with the idea of construction and movement on the new one. It was interesting and helpful for the process because I passed from one to the other all the time regarding to my ideas. And both parts of this piece where built on the same time, little by little. It helps me to keep focus on one things without being annoyed.

Let others people interacting with your creation without rules is also a way to use incertitude and hasard and create with that (keep every object they don’t want to insert it as orange skin, screws or let them drawing whatever they want on the canva,…).

You have to manage with this afterwards and it’s part of the process. The process was based on the questions “how can I destroy this canva more ?”, “how can I use my friends artistic skills?” , “how can I be spontaneous making it?”.

The mindset was : don’t thinking so much, go ahead but take your time if you feel it. Do and don’t be afraid about destroying it because you’re not expecting anything from this creation. Don’t being afraid about doing too much and destroying the art.

I observed a lot my environment to find things to had. I used also every things my friends didn’t want because they founded it ugly or they didn’t need to use it finally.

It’s ironic to see how I got more pressure and feelings all along the process even though I did something messy from the beginning to don’t have to feel
that.
It’s also ironic to see how complementary are the two parts of the final creation. There is differences and similitudes.

Julien 2024

👇